Downloading Drivers from the Dell FTP Website and Unofficial Drivers

Dell Official Support

• Dell Computer Support for Windows 10 Article ID: 297954
• Dell Computer Support for Windows 8 Upgrade and Windows 8.1 Update Article ID: 575111
• Microsoft Windows 7 Compatible Dell Systems and System Requirements Article ID: 273634

If your system is listed in the document or came from Dell preinstalled with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 Dell will list driver sets for your system for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 respectively.

There are 2 sources of official Dell Drivers:

• Dell Drivers and Downloads
• Dell FTP Website

The recommended by Dell source is Dell Drivers and Downloads but I prefer the Dell FTP Website as the later consists of direct download links and is hence usually more reliable.

Note on the FTP Website all drivers for all OS are listed and you must select the ones which apply to you (WB64a = Windows 8.1 64 Bit).

Note in all of Dells official services the drivers are listed alphabetically by category. This is not the install order and the system likely won't function optimally if the drivers are installed in the order listed. When downloading the drivers refer to the notes I list here regarding installation order.

Unofficial Support

As Windows XP is at End of Life and many older Dell systems are compatible with Windows 7 I have listed an assortment of unofficial drivers here, these are mainly taken from newer Dell systems which have particular components in common or directly from the vendors such as Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Creative. These configurations are not supported by Dell but then neither is Windows XP anymore.

You may get the drivers sets here which are in the correct installation order. the driver sets I have listed have a primary focus on Windows 7. For Windows 8.1 installation in the bulk of cases the drivers will be built in natively to Windows 8.1 or the Windows 7 driver will work fine in Windows 8.1. I have some additional notes for general components for Windows 8.1 however.